The Venue offers unique opportunities for Canton and surrounding area

By Deb RobinsonEditor

Wednesday

Mar 13, 2019 at 11:37 AM

Have you heard about one of Canton’s newest establishments?

Have you heard about one of Canton’s newest establishments?

Located at 23 W. Pine Street, the site of the former Wright’s Furniture, The Venue banquet facility offers something unique not only to the community of Canton, but to Fulton County and the surrounding area.

Jed Rhoades, Rhoades Real Estate & Land Auction Services, Inc., recently spoke about this new venture, The Venue, “My wife, Haily, and I started a year ago probably, because we wanted to open a place. We knew we wanted to do something downtown after redoing this building (his office, 130 N. Main Street). We actually started by talking about doing something with the upstairs here. We were going to have to put an elevator in and we were only going to be able to seat about 130 people by the time we were all said and done so we started looking at every building in town. We looked at building new, which just wasn’t feasible for what we wanted to do.” Rhoades said they looked at the building at 23 W. Pine more than once, “We had looked at the Wright Furniture building one or two times. We kept coming back to it, but there wasn’t any parking.”

Rhoades explained they were concerned they would have to buy the building then tear half of it down to make room for parking.

Certainly a predicament, but once in a while, opportunities appear where once there didn’t seem to be any, “I’m on the Partnership Board, Spoon River Partnership, with Bob Senneff (President and CEO of Graham Hospital).

Finally, one meeting he called me out, ‘Jed, what’s the status of you opening a banquet hall?’.

“I told him we were working on it.”

A week later, said Rhoades, Senneff called him and suggested they have a meeting, “We got together, a few people from Graham, and us, and it started off with, ‘Hey, you can use our parking lot,’ and then next thing you know it was, ‘The Foundation would be interested in partnering with you if you would want to do it.’”

Rhoades said he knew opening such a facility would be a big venture and recognized having partners such as those at Graham would be a great fit, “That’s how the partnership got created. Once we resolved the parking issue we knew we could make this work.”

Lack of parking won’t be an issue for those attending events at The Venue.

Graham offers 185 parking spots while there is handicap parking alongside The Venue in addition to parking in city lots.

What events does Rhoades envision taking place at The Venue?

“For our big room it’s really built for large fundraisers and weddings. We’ve got prom coming up, we’ve got the Turkey Federation this week. We just did the Evening in Red and the YWCA event. We’ve got Dueling Pianos, April 6. Our smaller room I think we’ll use more frequently for events such as birthday parties, graduation, retirement, family reunions; any kind of small gathering, you could do in there.”

Rhoades noted the bigger room, by fire code, can seat 299 while the smaller room can seat comfortably around 70 to 80. Options are available where the smaller room can be rented by the hour, “We found by having just half day rentals somebody may not want to rent it for the whole half day and spend all the money. I don’t blame them. We have it dialed in now where if you want to rent it for two or three hours it’s pretty affordable.”

In addition to all of the possible events that could be held at The Venue, Rhoades is hoping to bring entertainment opportunities to the community and surrounding area.

As briefly mentioned, Saturday, April 6, The Venue will host Dueling Pianos with Felix and Fingers.

Reservations may be made from The Venue’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/TheVenueCanton.

Those attending must be 21.

Rhoades is interested in bringing a mix of entertainers to The Venue, “We’re talking to two comedians right now and do maybe a band right afterwards. We’re thinking about maybe murder mysteries. We’ve talked to a group about doing a Bridal Expo.”

Further, he noted, Elmwood does a big Outdoor Expo every year, and while they wouldn’t take the lead on an event such as that, they could provide the space.

An Open House is slated for Wednesday, March 20, 4 to 7 p.m. at The Venue.

What can folks expect?

“We’ll have the full building open. You’ll have a chance to tour everything from the kitchen to the small meeting room to the big room, the bar. We’ll have the bar open where you can purchase drinks if you want while you’re there. We have a state-of-the-art AV (audio/video) system with our projectors and TVs, brand new sound system; so you’ll be able to check out the facility. All four of our caterers (Cupcake Baby, Bistro 101, Cornerstone Catering and Smokin’ Guns BBQ) will be there and have samples for you to try. We’ll have pricing information if people want to talk about that. We’d love to have our courtyard done for it, but the weather hasn’t cooperated. We have a lot of people who really want to get in and see it (The Venue) so we figured we’d do this now and then we’ll have something late Spring, probably, when we get the courtyard done.”

With the addition of The Venue banquet facility to Canton’s business community it becomes the only event center/banquet facility.

Said Rhoades, “We’re built to be a banquet facility. We’re built to be an event center. All of our space is accommodating for that. It’s all fresh and brand new. It’s all on one level and ADA compliant. My big thing is I want people to come out and see it because I think if you see it you’re just not going to believe what we’ve done to it. Again, we did it in around eight weeks.”

They do still have about 2,000 square feet open, “We’re working with someone about possibly putting a restaurant in there, but that space is available, I don’t know exactly what we’ll do with it.”

“Clearly the weddings and other events are what pays the bills, but it’s not so much about making money on these big events, but it’s just good for the community because there’s nowhere to go to do some of this stuff.

Dueling Pianos, I can’t think of anything other than a fundraiser in town where we’ve had anyone do dueling pianos. And, it’s not that someone else isn’t capable, they just don’t have a big enough venue to do it.”

It is Rhodes’s hope The Venue banquet facility is well received by the public, “We’re trying to do something that benefits the community. We’re trying to keep people in town. I think that’s a good thing. It keeps people downtown.”

Tickets for Dueling Pianos may only be purchased online; however Rhoades said if someone is interested in tickets and doesn’t have Facebook they may contact him.

Those attending the Open House may also register for free tickets to Dueling Pianos.